Australian customers will have to stump up almost double the US price for some versions of Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system that arrived in Australian stores yesterday.
 

The company cited taxes, freight costs and currency fluctuations as key reasons that the retail price for full and upgrade versions of its software were substantially higher than in the US.

The most basic version of the software will cost $199 to upgrade here compared with $US119 ($129) in the US, but, at the top end of the range, Australian customers must pay $429 to upgrade to the Ultimate version, almost double the $US219.99 ($238) price tag.

"Retailers operate with much tighter margins in the US than Australia. That is a fact. Taxes in this market are very different to Australia. That is a fact. We are a large country and we need to freight products from overseas and that is a fact. These things do affect pricing in this market," McLean said.
 

This is nearly the exact same set of excuses Apple gave for gouging Australians. And this is my response:

Ah, the good old holy trinity of excuses for Australians being gouged - 'taxes', freight costs, and 'currency fluctuations'.

It beggars belief software companies think they are fooling anybody. The Australian GST would add, at most, 10% to the cost of a product. Freight cost is a laughable excuse, unless we are to believe the discs are manufactured in the US and cost hundreds of dollars each to ship to Australia.

Both freight costs and currency fluctuations are complete hogwash, otherwise Microsoft would not go to extraordinary lengths to prevent paid-for downloads by Australians from the US, in US dollars. Even if Windows 7 were shipped from Amazon at the standard DVD parcel rate - something in the order of $10 -  this would not explain hundreds of dollars difference.

I wonder how it is these spokespeople sleep at night? Then I realise they sleep on a pile of money, exsanguinated from Australians.